Rosemary’s Baby

There’s a rare opportunity to buy a co-op apartment in The Dakota right now. I know this because an ad keeps finding me online this week telling me so; I don’t know who thinks I might want to buy a $1.8 Million one-bedroom on the eighth floor of a historic building – that’s not including the “maintenance fees,” which are higher than my rent in Brooklyn – but they should check their algorithm.

I do like history, I’ll give them that. The Dakota to me isn’t about the tragedy of John Lennon, it’s about the tragedy of Rosemary Woodhouse. I can relate to how congenitally nice and accommodating she is to neighbors. I’m the sort of person who’d rather put a pillow over his head than tell the neighbors to quiet down.

The day my wife and I first saw the place we’ve called home for five years out here in South Brooklyn – not quite Sunset Park, but not exactly South Slope either: I just call it “by the cemetery” – was on a hot 4th of July. We woke up and watched Rosemary’s Baby on a whim. Afterwards, while no one else was searching the ads for apartments on a holiday, my wife logged on and noticed the name of a broker she’d met once before, and called him, and he said “I’m actually at the place right now, come on over.”

Rosemary wasn’t as lucky. I don’t know who’s going to drop One Point Eight on a gorgeous little “starter” apartment in the Dakota this year, but if a kind old, uh, Jewish-seeming neighbor knocks on their door asking questions about their family plans, they might want to grow some boundaries.